Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Patience is a Virtue

“Cut you!” Sandy, the neighbor’s three year old son, yelled, giddy with excitement, when Cthulhu, a sea monster, appeared on the screen.

Jenna knew The Call of Cthulhu was not exactly a movie for little kids but he seemed to enjoy it and she certainly enjoyed watching my favorite movie monster wreak havoc. She wasn’t sure where Sandy got the words “cut you” from as no one was using a weapon but figured he was interjecting what he would do if he were battling Cthulhu.

Every time the monster came on, Sandy would chant, “Cut you!”

Jenna laughed but didn’t think much of it.

A few weeks later, Margo, Sandy’s mother, called and invited Jenna to go on a movie magic tour at a nearby monster movie studio. Margo knew she loved seeing the behind-the-scenes stuff with Sandy, who was fascinated with it, too.

While they were walking around the studio, Sandy stopped suddenly and yelled, “Cut you! Cut you!”

Jenna laughed and pulled out her cell phone to take a movie of it as he was floundering around and yelling. When Sandy’s eyes grew big and a look of horror crossed his face, she turned to see what he was looking at. “CUT YOU!” he screamed as he turned and ran to find his mother.

She screamed as cthulhu stepped out of the scene and wrapped his tentacles around her. While the monster tightened his grip on her and forced the life from her body, she suddenly realized what Sandy had been trying to say - cthulhu - and laughed. Jenna took her last breath and the monster dropped her then stepped back into the scene.

Sandy dragged Margo over to Jenna’s now lifeless body. “Call security! Someone help!” Margo screamed. “Sandy did you see who did this?”

“Cut you, cut you!” he yelled as he pointed to the monster.

“That’s just a prop,” Margo chided.

“It was the monster,” Sandy insisted as the studio security and staff surrounded them. In all of the confusion only Sandy saw the sea monster slip away.

The security camera had malfunctioned during the attack so there was no footage of what happened, just Sandy’s eyewitness account of his babysitter being attacked by the cthulhu prop. No one believed him, especially when the prop couldn’t be found.

Three days later, another woman was found dead. Within a week there were two more dead women. Each time the women had been alone and the cameras malfunctioned again so there was no evidence of what happened.

The police set up a sting operation in hopes of catching the killer but there were no more attacks. The damage had been done and the studio was forced to sell the business to their main competitor, Cthulhu Studios, and the rights to all their movies because of the lawsuits resulting from the deaths of the women. The police weren’t able to solve the mystery and the killer remained at large.

Sandy, however, never gave up. He knew he’d seen the cthulhu prop attacking his babysitter and it was just too convenient that the studio had been bought out by Cthulhu Studios. While he was visiting the studio 12 years later, he stumbled across the prop room and the cthulhu costume. He called the police and reported it. The old-timers laughed at Sandy’s claim and assigned Robbie Dutone, a rookie detective, to the case.

Robbie met Sandy at the studios with a search warrant two days later. The costume was still there. “This is the costume the killer was wearing,” Sandy insisted. Robbie had his doubts but the kid was so insistent.

Upon closer examination, Robbie discovered several human hairs clinging to the tentacles. He collected them as evidence then had them analyzed and compared to the DNA collected from the victims at the time of their deaths. Only one hair matched one of the victims but it was enough to reopen the case.

Hair collected from inside the costume matched the DNA of Tim Howard, who was currently housed in Los Angeles County Jail. He’d been arrested a few years ago on a hit and run vehicular homicide and was serving a ten year term. It didn’t take much to get a confession from him about the murders and how he’d been hired by the owner of Cthulhu Studios to rub out the competition however he wanted.

Following the trial, reporters asked Sandy how he felt now that his babysitter’s killers were behind bars. “Patience is a virtue.”